The business that has kept me from regularly writing here has also kept me from reading the news. Now I can no longer ignore the stories of abuse at the hands of priests, the criminal misconduct of church leaders, and the stony response from the top. So today I will write on my own reactions to this ongoing tragedy, and some positive responses that it could eventuate.
Sometimes I feel like I play for a losing team. That is to say, when talking about my place in the Church (and church) I use a lot of underdog rhetoric. K. has taught me how to talk in reference to Christian environmentalism - namely, that Christians are blindly anthropocentric in ways that ignore major elements of Christ's message, the Old Testament histories, Christian metaphysics, and reality. K. has said that she no longer identifies with the institution that has failed so miserably, so consistently, so perennially. Now I know exactly how she feels. It is hard to make excuses for this institution that has regularly promoted injustice, inequality, ignorance, and evil since the time of ancient Rome. To zoom out, the ancient monotheist traditions all have more blood on their hands than purification clothes.
But our disaster is unique. Our religion's evil is intimate, personal, and sexual. This evil is in our bedroom, in the sheets next to us. This evil contradicts our last ounce of hope in personal, inexplicable trust. Oh, but this evil is not just localized or singular, it is also systemic and global. Today's religious evil is the worst of both worlds - personal and universal violation.
Overshadowing my sympathy for the abused, my reaction has been vocational, challenging my assumptions about what I want to do with my life, and what I think is important in this world. I have lived on certain premises since middle-school, when I wanted to be a priest, to graduate school in theology, to currently searching for work in churches. But now - what the hell am I doing with this organization!? I am pro-women to the point of philogyny, very pro-queer, sexually liberated, environmentally aware, postmodern, and democratic. Sure I fancy some aspects of traditionalism, but that's mostly in the menswear department, not in theological sensibilities.
Lets see. I appreciate the way tradition, connects us with ancestors (philanderous racists that they were) and with a global community (millions of whom are caught in mortal power struggles in which religious institutions are almost uniformly in the pocket of the persecuted). I deeply appreciate ritual, as this blog exhibits. The Eucharist is occasionally a powerful action. Um....
Whenever I 'do theology', whenever I talk or read about religion and spirituality, or whenever I take part in rituals, I do not focus on the positive. I see myself as an agent of change within a dilapidated ship. And I am not alone - a dozen or more weekly magazines, and countless academic journals, are following the Catholic response with rabid criticism. Respected theologians across the globe (but overwhelmingly in NATO member countries) are being equally aggressive. Leuven taught me that that the movers and shakers in theology are pushing the boulder with me.
So what do we want? This dramatic evil could stoke two centuries-old fights. First, the sexual identity of priests as celibate men. It has been thoroughly shown that married priests are 1)more aligned with the tradition; 2) one of the endearing aspects of the Orthodox and Protestant churches; 3) practically unassailable. Female priests is a fight I see for another 150 years, but this fight might be won in a decade. Assuming, that is, the pope wants it.
Which brings us to the second front - hierarchy. Papal primacy (the Pope having unique and superlative powers compared to other bishops, contrasted with 'collegiality') is a tack on everyone's ass. It is THE impasse of EVERY ecumenical dialogue (that is, the big reason that Anglicans and Lutherans and Catholics and Orthodox aren't one big church with a lot of imaginative parts is almost entirely because of the Vatican's immovable and very Italian position on the role of the pope. yeah really). Papal primacy is also a major blindspot for Christian metaphysics, which had to invent and prop up a ridiculous notion of Truth that allowed Truth to be known specially and infallibly by one person. The pastoral management of parishes, dioceses, regions, countries, and continental churches is sometimes coordinated by, sometimes hindered by, Rome's interference. And, as the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands demonstrates, even when the ritual and theology are entirely intact, the centralization of authority on Rome is the sole reason we do not have married and female Bishops in every dioceses that wants them. Hans Kung Hans Kung Hans Kung.
B16 has taken some unique steps to deal with the situation - the unprecedented, intensive visit of the Irish bishops, the pastoral letter to Ireland - so there is some hope that he recognizes this as a watershed. And, encouragingly, even uber-Catholic Ireland is not taking shit from Rome anymore, and will civilly prosecute priests as sex offenders, extraditing them from wherever they are transferred to as if they were criminals on the lamb (which they are) (AWESOME PUN!) I hope this spark for Vatican III, the type of council that reinforces VII and dusts off the explicitly unfinished agenda of Church reform that has haunted us since 1965. Well, since 0035.
I meant to write on the idea of Church, and Hope, and ecclesiogenesis, but I guess that will wait. 940. Andy.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Watches
No excuse this time; sheer laziness has kept me from the blog for a few days. But anyone who knows me knows that, behold, the post entitled 'Watches' will make all things new.
I do not remember the first time I thought a watch or clock was remarkably beautiful. Perhaps all mechanisms, dials, numbers, and polished metal can be aesthetically positive. But clock faces are entirely different for me, and have always been. Then, one day, I saw how they worked. I witnessed a skeleton movement, in which the beating heart and secondary movements that normally lay underneath the functional hands and dials are exposed, rendering the watch both dysfunctional through the removal of numbers and static reference points, and beautiful in its wild complexity. My lover affair has sent me to the outer limits of horologie to admire million-dollar watches. But more than the visual appreciation, my love is philosophical, charged with history and irony, and no little bit of testosterone.
Clocks were not always built to measure the passage of mere time. Original clock faces indicated 24 hours in a circle, and the hands were thought to track the actual movement of the sun around the earth. Some clocks also tracked the movement of the other planets and the moon. Ideally, the hands of the clock pointed directly at the position of the moon, Saturn, or Jupiter. The hubris of this mechanical terracentricity is only matched by the physical beauty of these objects, constructed by princes out of the most malleable, and so the most expensive, metals, or else built into babel towers that redefined the city.
This is to say that mechanical time-keeping devices have always been objects of beauty, produced by exceptional craftsmen who wish to showcase their skill, and at great expense by those who wish to demonstrate their wealth. By contrast, the only widespread predecessor to the mechanical clock was the sun clocks, such as a sun dial, which were easily crafted from any available material and relied on raw nature - instead of ingeniously shaped natural phenomena, such as springs - to function. The sand-clocks, like an hour glass, were themselves prized possessions of those able to afford expert glass-workers, and even so were only available some fifty years before mechanical clocks, and then only in Italy. So be it resolved that mechanical clocks are unique objects of art and craft.
Let me describe the operation of a mechanical clock. First there is a drive train - some thing that creates kinetic energy. Not much energy is needed, only enough to suspend and move the weight of the hands around the face. The most simple is a falling weight on a rope, such as with early bell-tower clocks. A coiled spring set to bouncing and returning has also been popular. Both must be wound by people at intervals, or, as with modern watches, using the kinetic energy of normal wrist movement. Oh, or electricity via batteries.
Second, the energy must be carefully regulated using a 'regulator' (surprise!). That is a pendulum, or a sort of paddle-wheel thing, or this really cool thing called a grasshopper. Basically, the energy from the 'drive' is sent through a gear, which is stopped and started by the back and forth of, say, a pendulum. It goes unsaid that the rate of that moderation, and thus the length and weight of that pendulum, is under careful scrutiny. Watches use this cool weighted, spinning wheel around the circular, bouncing spring.
The drive and regulation is the really cool, important part. Once you have regulated kinetic energy, the world is your oyster. Using ingenious systems of gears, horologists can spin hands around several faces at once, seconds and hours, or once a day, or once a month, or something that chimes. Everything else is a game on the relationship between drive and regulation.
A particularly remarkable development is the Tourbillon, which was developed in 1795 in Switzerland, where a competition to make the most complicated and insane mechanical devices is part of the ambient culture. It was developed to counteract the millisecond of inaccuracy theoretically possible when super high-end watches experience extreme temperature changes. Yeah, its pretty ridiculous. Basically, the mainspring is not only encased in a regulating wheel, the whole darn thing spins so as to average out the impact of gravity and metal expansion. Today, they can spin on three axes. Let us agree that all clocks are monuments to engineers, and are mechanical showpieces. But some are made in factories, while others are handcrafted by millionaire masters at the rate of one per ten years.
In addition to the mechanical awesomeness is the philosophical meaning, which I have premeditated. The original function of clocks, to track celestial bodies, is the definition of ego. The term 'regulate' is a big part of horological jargon, as if a terrestrial device could accurately reflect - let alone impact - time itself. Watches up the ante by placing this device on a person's wrist, next to the buttons of his cuff or the clasp of her bracelet. It is jewelry, in the accessories section of Target next to the sunglasses. They are simultaneously common and extraordinary.
And they are beautiful. The craftsmen who make these are like architects, or graphic designers, or industrial designers. They produce functional objects of beauty. Objects that are at once gaudy and subtle, playful and formal, ironic and literal.
Visit the blog I link to on the sidebar, watchismo.com, or the website of independent horologie to see some examples of what extraordinary watches look like. Search 'tourbillon' or 'regulator' or 'Vaceron Constantin' on youtube. Fall in love.
935. Andy.
A watch sculpture, by the Swiss group Trois C, highlighting the mainspring and weighted wheel regulator (aka 'escapement').
Vacheron Constantin's Tour de l'Ile showing off - 24 independent functions, 10,000 parts, $1.5 million (and totally unavailable), 250 years of watchmaking.
One of the most complicated watches ever made, Breguet's Marie Antoinette pocket watch, commissioned in 1783 and completed in 1827 (the original client noticeably absent).
Despite or because of their simplicity, RGM in Lancaster, PA, produces the watches that I most enjoy looking at.
I do not remember the first time I thought a watch or clock was remarkably beautiful. Perhaps all mechanisms, dials, numbers, and polished metal can be aesthetically positive. But clock faces are entirely different for me, and have always been. Then, one day, I saw how they worked. I witnessed a skeleton movement, in which the beating heart and secondary movements that normally lay underneath the functional hands and dials are exposed, rendering the watch both dysfunctional through the removal of numbers and static reference points, and beautiful in its wild complexity. My lover affair has sent me to the outer limits of horologie to admire million-dollar watches. But more than the visual appreciation, my love is philosophical, charged with history and irony, and no little bit of testosterone.
Clocks were not always built to measure the passage of mere time. Original clock faces indicated 24 hours in a circle, and the hands were thought to track the actual movement of the sun around the earth. Some clocks also tracked the movement of the other planets and the moon. Ideally, the hands of the clock pointed directly at the position of the moon, Saturn, or Jupiter. The hubris of this mechanical terracentricity is only matched by the physical beauty of these objects, constructed by princes out of the most malleable, and so the most expensive, metals, or else built into babel towers that redefined the city.
This is to say that mechanical time-keeping devices have always been objects of beauty, produced by exceptional craftsmen who wish to showcase their skill, and at great expense by those who wish to demonstrate their wealth. By contrast, the only widespread predecessor to the mechanical clock was the sun clocks, such as a sun dial, which were easily crafted from any available material and relied on raw nature - instead of ingeniously shaped natural phenomena, such as springs - to function. The sand-clocks, like an hour glass, were themselves prized possessions of those able to afford expert glass-workers, and even so were only available some fifty years before mechanical clocks, and then only in Italy. So be it resolved that mechanical clocks are unique objects of art and craft.
Let me describe the operation of a mechanical clock. First there is a drive train - some thing that creates kinetic energy. Not much energy is needed, only enough to suspend and move the weight of the hands around the face. The most simple is a falling weight on a rope, such as with early bell-tower clocks. A coiled spring set to bouncing and returning has also been popular. Both must be wound by people at intervals, or, as with modern watches, using the kinetic energy of normal wrist movement. Oh, or electricity via batteries.
Second, the energy must be carefully regulated using a 'regulator' (surprise!). That is a pendulum, or a sort of paddle-wheel thing, or this really cool thing called a grasshopper. Basically, the energy from the 'drive' is sent through a gear, which is stopped and started by the back and forth of, say, a pendulum. It goes unsaid that the rate of that moderation, and thus the length and weight of that pendulum, is under careful scrutiny. Watches use this cool weighted, spinning wheel around the circular, bouncing spring.
The drive and regulation is the really cool, important part. Once you have regulated kinetic energy, the world is your oyster. Using ingenious systems of gears, horologists can spin hands around several faces at once, seconds and hours, or once a day, or once a month, or something that chimes. Everything else is a game on the relationship between drive and regulation.
A particularly remarkable development is the Tourbillon, which was developed in 1795 in Switzerland, where a competition to make the most complicated and insane mechanical devices is part of the ambient culture. It was developed to counteract the millisecond of inaccuracy theoretically possible when super high-end watches experience extreme temperature changes. Yeah, its pretty ridiculous. Basically, the mainspring is not only encased in a regulating wheel, the whole darn thing spins so as to average out the impact of gravity and metal expansion. Today, they can spin on three axes. Let us agree that all clocks are monuments to engineers, and are mechanical showpieces. But some are made in factories, while others are handcrafted by millionaire masters at the rate of one per ten years.
In addition to the mechanical awesomeness is the philosophical meaning, which I have premeditated. The original function of clocks, to track celestial bodies, is the definition of ego. The term 'regulate' is a big part of horological jargon, as if a terrestrial device could accurately reflect - let alone impact - time itself. Watches up the ante by placing this device on a person's wrist, next to the buttons of his cuff or the clasp of her bracelet. It is jewelry, in the accessories section of Target next to the sunglasses. They are simultaneously common and extraordinary.
And they are beautiful. The craftsmen who make these are like architects, or graphic designers, or industrial designers. They produce functional objects of beauty. Objects that are at once gaudy and subtle, playful and formal, ironic and literal.
Visit the blog I link to on the sidebar, watchismo.com, or the website of independent horologie to see some examples of what extraordinary watches look like. Search 'tourbillon' or 'regulator' or 'Vaceron Constantin' on youtube. Fall in love.
935. Andy.
A watch sculpture, by the Swiss group Trois C, highlighting the mainspring and weighted wheel regulator (aka 'escapement').
Vacheron Constantin's Tour de l'Ile showing off - 24 independent functions, 10,000 parts, $1.5 million (and totally unavailable), 250 years of watchmaking.
One of the most complicated watches ever made, Breguet's Marie Antoinette pocket watch, commissioned in 1783 and completed in 1827 (the original client noticeably absent).
Despite or because of their simplicity, RGM in Lancaster, PA, produces the watches that I most enjoy looking at.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Good Theology
True to my word, I will discuss four of my favorite theologians, and what makes them deserving of my fan-boy devotion.
I must begin with Karl Rahner (1904-1984), who, for me, is a template for good theology and outstanding theologians. I am not in this one alone, either - he is regularly considered to be one of the three most important theologians of the 20th century. He was the primary nuncio, or theological adviser, for Vatican II's influential German Bloc of bishops and theologians. He practically penned the modern understanding of Christianity (Nouvelle Theologie) that is the first major theological movement since medieval-19th century Scholasticism. He is at the heart of most cool things that the Church did (up until Liberation Theology). But it is not his reputation that makes me love him; his reputation is a reflection of his awesomeness.
Rahner never wrote systematic treatises (except, arguably, his Master's thesis and Doctoral projects, which are the first and last documents to be meta Rahner). Instead, each of his writings are specific, occasional. He writes to talk about education, about Mary, about reconciliation. Or he writes to define Grace, or define Freedom. I like that approach to writing theology because, before any words are read, it rejects the systematic ontology that plagued theology for centuries. That is to say, Rahner considers the work of theology to be limited, temporal, and context-specific, not general, universal, or infinite. And I don't even plan to discuss the really awesome parts of his theology, the things he writes about so occasionally. Also, his writing is terribly dense, and unapologetically complex. Indeed, to read Rahner you must totally blow your mind. Bam!
No list of Bad-ass theologians would be complete without Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955). Where to start? Paleontologist/geologist first, theologian second, and a full-on mystic. Teilhard was a big-picture person, for sure. His understanding of Christ was Cosmic, all of creation, including other galaxies, for all of time. And, as a paleontologist, Teilhard knew something about time. He is a tremendous writer, in English or French (he regularly self-translated), with beautiful, personal accounts, descriptions, and explanations. His collected letters from Egypt and China (where he helped discover Peking Man, one of the first hominid skeletons) are themselves worth owning. Besides his scope, he is directed very firmly to the future, the Omega point of history, the Kingdom of God.
I also love Hans Kung (1928-), an old friend of Rahner's. Kung basically predicted all of the major movements of Vatican II in a from-nowhere book just as John XXIII declared the conclave. Now, Kung does write big books, but they are always written as if to a friend, or a parishioner. He attempts, in each large work, to start from square one. So, for example, On Being A Christian simply describes every aspect of being a Christian. Likewise, the 2005 book on theology and science explains the debate as if I had never heard of anything, or looked up on a clear night (and also introduces me to Mozart).
As I particularly love Rahner for his approach to writing, I love Kung for his tone when dealing with the Church. He is not afraid to punch, to speak truth. I love when someone challenges authority and has the chops to do so. "The Church clings to the Spirit, chases the Holy Spirit, not the other way around. The extent to which the Church fails to recognize the Spirit is the extent to which is fails to be Church." Courageous up against the Church. Oh, by the way, he and Ratzinger used to work together, but are no longer on speaking terms. His license to teach as a Catholic has been repealed (its complicated - his university created a department just for him). And what topics does he most frequently pull into focus? Papacy and infallibility, eternal life, education, and ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.
Finally, lets get modern with Sallie McFague (1933-). She takes Ricoeur et al.'s intensive post-modern study of Metaphor and transforms it into Feminist eco liberation theology. Yeah, that's right: Eat it, hetero/anthro/andro/scholasto-orthodoxy. She is moving forward with the church-challenging work with massive theological, metaphysical chops(ala Kung). Also, and again, a pleasure to read - a narrative style that is defended to its essence in her call to post-modern narrative/hermeneutic philosophy.
All said, what do I like in a theologian? Chops, first and foremost. Nothing half-baked, everything well considered, well prayed, well researched. I like to draw from multiple fields and genres. I like it to be real and practical at the same time as it touches the ethereal. After all, that balance of transcendence and immanence is the essence of religion.
(I also like Jesuits, like Rahner and Teilhard).
790. Tomorrow, we'll either compare wine to beer or be ready to talk about affection.
I must begin with Karl Rahner (1904-1984), who, for me, is a template for good theology and outstanding theologians. I am not in this one alone, either - he is regularly considered to be one of the three most important theologians of the 20th century. He was the primary nuncio, or theological adviser, for Vatican II's influential German Bloc of bishops and theologians. He practically penned the modern understanding of Christianity (Nouvelle Theologie) that is the first major theological movement since medieval-19th century Scholasticism. He is at the heart of most cool things that the Church did (up until Liberation Theology). But it is not his reputation that makes me love him; his reputation is a reflection of his awesomeness.
Rahner never wrote systematic treatises (except, arguably, his Master's thesis and Doctoral projects, which are the first and last documents to be meta Rahner). Instead, each of his writings are specific, occasional. He writes to talk about education, about Mary, about reconciliation. Or he writes to define Grace, or define Freedom. I like that approach to writing theology because, before any words are read, it rejects the systematic ontology that plagued theology for centuries. That is to say, Rahner considers the work of theology to be limited, temporal, and context-specific, not general, universal, or infinite. And I don't even plan to discuss the really awesome parts of his theology, the things he writes about so occasionally. Also, his writing is terribly dense, and unapologetically complex. Indeed, to read Rahner you must totally blow your mind. Bam!
No list of Bad-ass theologians would be complete without Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881-1955). Where to start? Paleontologist/geologist first, theologian second, and a full-on mystic. Teilhard was a big-picture person, for sure. His understanding of Christ was Cosmic, all of creation, including other galaxies, for all of time. And, as a paleontologist, Teilhard knew something about time. He is a tremendous writer, in English or French (he regularly self-translated), with beautiful, personal accounts, descriptions, and explanations. His collected letters from Egypt and China (where he helped discover Peking Man, one of the first hominid skeletons) are themselves worth owning. Besides his scope, he is directed very firmly to the future, the Omega point of history, the Kingdom of God.
I also love Hans Kung (1928-), an old friend of Rahner's. Kung basically predicted all of the major movements of Vatican II in a from-nowhere book just as John XXIII declared the conclave. Now, Kung does write big books, but they are always written as if to a friend, or a parishioner. He attempts, in each large work, to start from square one. So, for example, On Being A Christian simply describes every aspect of being a Christian. Likewise, the 2005 book on theology and science explains the debate as if I had never heard of anything, or looked up on a clear night (and also introduces me to Mozart).
As I particularly love Rahner for his approach to writing, I love Kung for his tone when dealing with the Church. He is not afraid to punch, to speak truth. I love when someone challenges authority and has the chops to do so. "The Church clings to the Spirit, chases the Holy Spirit, not the other way around. The extent to which the Church fails to recognize the Spirit is the extent to which is fails to be Church." Courageous up against the Church. Oh, by the way, he and Ratzinger used to work together, but are no longer on speaking terms. His license to teach as a Catholic has been repealed (its complicated - his university created a department just for him). And what topics does he most frequently pull into focus? Papacy and infallibility, eternal life, education, and ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.
Finally, lets get modern with Sallie McFague (1933-). She takes Ricoeur et al.'s intensive post-modern study of Metaphor and transforms it into Feminist eco liberation theology. Yeah, that's right: Eat it, hetero/anthro/andro/scholasto-orthodoxy. She is moving forward with the church-challenging work with massive theological, metaphysical chops(ala Kung). Also, and again, a pleasure to read - a narrative style that is defended to its essence in her call to post-modern narrative/hermeneutic philosophy.
All said, what do I like in a theologian? Chops, first and foremost. Nothing half-baked, everything well considered, well prayed, well researched. I like to draw from multiple fields and genres. I like it to be real and practical at the same time as it touches the ethereal. After all, that balance of transcendence and immanence is the essence of religion.
(I also like Jesuits, like Rahner and Teilhard).
790. Tomorrow, we'll either compare wine to beer or be ready to talk about affection.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Wild Strawberries
It's been too long; I enjoy writing, but now that I have a few big ideas out of my chest and onto the internets, I feel less obliged to write. But last night I watched Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman.
This is one of my favorite movies/films. I doubt any single work of literature or film has influenced me more, and I find it aesthetically haunting and beautiful. I have watched it more times than almost any other movie - possible exceptions include Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Grosse Pointe Blank, but neither of those come close on impact. Bergman's film illustrates a few simple lessons, almost cliches, of which I regularly need to be reminded.
The Plot: septuagenarian medical doctor/professor/self-described pedant must travel to Lund to receive a prestigious life-time achievement award. We meet the protagonist, Isak Borg, the morning of the trip, after a night full of strange dreams. He wakes early, and so decides to scrap his air-travel plans for a roadtrip. His daughter-in-law, who is auspiciously and surprisingly staying with him, asks to go with him and return to her husband/his son in Lund. Along the way they detour at his mother's house and the family's old summer cottage, they meet with three allegorical hitchhikers and an abusively antagonistic married couple, and Isak has a few more naps with strange dreams. Upon arriving in Lund, Isak's son and daughter-in-law are somewhat reconciled, as Isak attempts (and fails?) to share some glimpse of his new wisdom with his icy son.
Isak Borg enjoys being alone, at least apparently. He and his live-in housekeeper Agda share a surprisingly intimate fight when he wakes her with the changed plans. And again, although he is at first cold and formal with his daughter-in-law ("You only like me around the house like a cat" she says. "A cat, or a human being," he inadequately responds), by the end of the trip they, too, have an affable intimacy. The final scene of the movie includes a beautiful kiss, she sitting on the edge of his guest bed in Lund, asking him about her shoes, and kissing him very fondly on the cheek. His mother demonstrates part of this desire/rejection of company: when visiting, she is terribly formal and unfriendly, but when they make a show of leaving she, surprisingly and subtly, pressures them to stay for tea. "No one visits me here anymore, not that I mind," she says, but we are not convinced as she thumbs through her mostly deceased children's old toys.
The love and respect paradox is another big theme. Isak Borg is clearly respected, and takes great care in matters of honor. But apparently he does not expect any fondness from anyone. Pumping gas in a region where he began his medical career, he visits with a young couple who he must have known back then. They offer his gas for free, and discuss naming their expected child Isak. As he tries to pay, the mechanic says, "We can do the right thing, too. Everyone in this region has not forgotten. Some things cannot be repaid, even with gas." Isak replies, to himself, "Maybe I should have stayed here." In Isak's second dream, dosing in the strawberry patch at the old summer home, he dreams of his old flame Sara, who ended up marrying Isak's promiscuous cousin. Breaking down after being taunted for kissing the cousin instead of her beau Isak, Sara sobs, "Isak is so good, so high above me. He makes me feel so low. He wants to read poetry and only kiss in the dark." In a later dream, Isak remembers a scene where he witnessed his wife's rape (?). After the fact, sitting in the woods with her pseudo-assailant, she says, "I will go tell Isak. I know exactly what he will say. That he understands perfectly. That I am not to blame. That I am hysterical and should take a sleeping pill to calm my nerves." However, the main characters of our roadtrip seem fond of Isak: Agda, after 30 years of close service; the tag-alongs, perhaps only because of their youthful exuberance ("I am a virgin, that is why I am so cheeky. Also, I smoke a pipe."); and the daughter-in-law, but only after lunch.
So far, Isak does not try for friendship. He speaks of himself as cold-dead already. But he does look for it, and find it. The roadtrip transforms him in his late years. I think his relationship with his daughter-in-law most clearly shows this, as they converse during the whole trip, as she witnesses his past and his present state, and slowly warms to him as he himself lowers his walls of old-world gentility and 'honor'.
Oh, but no favorite movie of mine would be complete without a full-frontal assault on mortality. Ingmar Bergman is most famous for his treatment of death in Seventh Seal, which includes the prototypes for such famous scenes as playing chess with death, the dance of death, and comically long death throws. But I prefer the treatment Bergman gives to Isak Borg, our elderly hero. The first scene of the movie is the first dream, almost entirely silent, shot in high-contrast black and white, where each noise (squeaking cart, footsteps on pavement) are painfully sharp and loud. Isak is lost in a strange city of abandoned buildings. He looks at a clock above the street and then at his pocket-watch (not his but his father's, it turns out) - both are without hands. He tries to ask for directions from a suddenly appeared shape, but the head has no face, and the body collapses to the ground and melts. A funeral carriage approaches, breaks, and the coffin falls open onto the ground. Guess who is inside but Isak, pulling our protagonist down into the coffin!
Again, midway, while dozing after lunch, during the dream which includes his wife's rape, Isak is being tested in medicine by the abusive husband they had recently ejected from their car. He fails miserably, cannot remember anything. He cannot even tell if a woman is alive or dead. The audience/judging panel for his examination is not amused.
Finally, just before arriving in Lund, Isak and his daughter-in-law discuss the parameters and rationale of her having stayed with him. She was pregnant (and smoking, yes), and Isak's son did not want the child. She tells of when she broke the news to the son; he said, "I was an unwanted child in a loveless marriage.... My dream is to be dead. Stone dead. I will not have any responsibility that prevents me from leaving this world at the precise moment of my choosing." Isak is surprised to hear this - but he is so young! and so successful! and you (his wife) are with child! But Isak knows this feeling in himself, too.
I think it is our mortality that defines us. Life is for the living, sure, and only the most nihilistic focus on their death. But we do die. We are surrounded by death. The open secret of beautiful sunny days is that they end, and will never return. Our time does tick by, on clocks with hands (note - my philosophical obsession with watches developed with my love of this movie). Focusing on death is for the dying, but even the elderly Isak, by the end, is not obsessed. He hopes to cure his son's death wish. Perhaps it is the ability to feel the sun on beautiful days, to feel the love and affection of real friends, that separates life from cold, respectable, honorable, codified, legalistic death. Forgive the strict rules of debt repayment, Isak! Your son's love is more important.
1200 words. A triumphant return? And for tomorrow (just so I don't have an excuse) I want to write on either my favorite theologians, good literature, or affection.
This is one of my favorite movies/films. I doubt any single work of literature or film has influenced me more, and I find it aesthetically haunting and beautiful. I have watched it more times than almost any other movie - possible exceptions include Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Grosse Pointe Blank, but neither of those come close on impact. Bergman's film illustrates a few simple lessons, almost cliches, of which I regularly need to be reminded.
The Plot: septuagenarian medical doctor/professor/self-described pedant must travel to Lund to receive a prestigious life-time achievement award. We meet the protagonist, Isak Borg, the morning of the trip, after a night full of strange dreams. He wakes early, and so decides to scrap his air-travel plans for a roadtrip. His daughter-in-law, who is auspiciously and surprisingly staying with him, asks to go with him and return to her husband/his son in Lund. Along the way they detour at his mother's house and the family's old summer cottage, they meet with three allegorical hitchhikers and an abusively antagonistic married couple, and Isak has a few more naps with strange dreams. Upon arriving in Lund, Isak's son and daughter-in-law are somewhat reconciled, as Isak attempts (and fails?) to share some glimpse of his new wisdom with his icy son.
Isak Borg enjoys being alone, at least apparently. He and his live-in housekeeper Agda share a surprisingly intimate fight when he wakes her with the changed plans. And again, although he is at first cold and formal with his daughter-in-law ("You only like me around the house like a cat" she says. "A cat, or a human being," he inadequately responds), by the end of the trip they, too, have an affable intimacy. The final scene of the movie includes a beautiful kiss, she sitting on the edge of his guest bed in Lund, asking him about her shoes, and kissing him very fondly on the cheek. His mother demonstrates part of this desire/rejection of company: when visiting, she is terribly formal and unfriendly, but when they make a show of leaving she, surprisingly and subtly, pressures them to stay for tea. "No one visits me here anymore, not that I mind," she says, but we are not convinced as she thumbs through her mostly deceased children's old toys.
The love and respect paradox is another big theme. Isak Borg is clearly respected, and takes great care in matters of honor. But apparently he does not expect any fondness from anyone. Pumping gas in a region where he began his medical career, he visits with a young couple who he must have known back then. They offer his gas for free, and discuss naming their expected child Isak. As he tries to pay, the mechanic says, "We can do the right thing, too. Everyone in this region has not forgotten. Some things cannot be repaid, even with gas." Isak replies, to himself, "Maybe I should have stayed here." In Isak's second dream, dosing in the strawberry patch at the old summer home, he dreams of his old flame Sara, who ended up marrying Isak's promiscuous cousin. Breaking down after being taunted for kissing the cousin instead of her beau Isak, Sara sobs, "Isak is so good, so high above me. He makes me feel so low. He wants to read poetry and only kiss in the dark." In a later dream, Isak remembers a scene where he witnessed his wife's rape (?). After the fact, sitting in the woods with her pseudo-assailant, she says, "I will go tell Isak. I know exactly what he will say. That he understands perfectly. That I am not to blame. That I am hysterical and should take a sleeping pill to calm my nerves." However, the main characters of our roadtrip seem fond of Isak: Agda, after 30 years of close service; the tag-alongs, perhaps only because of their youthful exuberance ("I am a virgin, that is why I am so cheeky. Also, I smoke a pipe."); and the daughter-in-law, but only after lunch.
So far, Isak does not try for friendship. He speaks of himself as cold-dead already. But he does look for it, and find it. The roadtrip transforms him in his late years. I think his relationship with his daughter-in-law most clearly shows this, as they converse during the whole trip, as she witnesses his past and his present state, and slowly warms to him as he himself lowers his walls of old-world gentility and 'honor'.
Oh, but no favorite movie of mine would be complete without a full-frontal assault on mortality. Ingmar Bergman is most famous for his treatment of death in Seventh Seal, which includes the prototypes for such famous scenes as playing chess with death, the dance of death, and comically long death throws. But I prefer the treatment Bergman gives to Isak Borg, our elderly hero. The first scene of the movie is the first dream, almost entirely silent, shot in high-contrast black and white, where each noise (squeaking cart, footsteps on pavement) are painfully sharp and loud. Isak is lost in a strange city of abandoned buildings. He looks at a clock above the street and then at his pocket-watch (not his but his father's, it turns out) - both are without hands. He tries to ask for directions from a suddenly appeared shape, but the head has no face, and the body collapses to the ground and melts. A funeral carriage approaches, breaks, and the coffin falls open onto the ground. Guess who is inside but Isak, pulling our protagonist down into the coffin!
Again, midway, while dozing after lunch, during the dream which includes his wife's rape, Isak is being tested in medicine by the abusive husband they had recently ejected from their car. He fails miserably, cannot remember anything. He cannot even tell if a woman is alive or dead. The audience/judging panel for his examination is not amused.
Finally, just before arriving in Lund, Isak and his daughter-in-law discuss the parameters and rationale of her having stayed with him. She was pregnant (and smoking, yes), and Isak's son did not want the child. She tells of when she broke the news to the son; he said, "I was an unwanted child in a loveless marriage.... My dream is to be dead. Stone dead. I will not have any responsibility that prevents me from leaving this world at the precise moment of my choosing." Isak is surprised to hear this - but he is so young! and so successful! and you (his wife) are with child! But Isak knows this feeling in himself, too.
I think it is our mortality that defines us. Life is for the living, sure, and only the most nihilistic focus on their death. But we do die. We are surrounded by death. The open secret of beautiful sunny days is that they end, and will never return. Our time does tick by, on clocks with hands (note - my philosophical obsession with watches developed with my love of this movie). Focusing on death is for the dying, but even the elderly Isak, by the end, is not obsessed. He hopes to cure his son's death wish. Perhaps it is the ability to feel the sun on beautiful days, to feel the love and affection of real friends, that separates life from cold, respectable, honorable, codified, legalistic death. Forgive the strict rules of debt repayment, Isak! Your son's love is more important.
1200 words. A triumphant return? And for tomorrow (just so I don't have an excuse) I want to write on either my favorite theologians, good literature, or affection.
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